Amateur Electronics

Tag Archives: ota

The Arduino Core for ESP8266 and ESP32 uses one SPI flash memory sector to emulate an EEPROM. When you initialize the EEPROM object (calling begin) it reads the contents of the sector into a memory buffer. Reading a writing is done over that in-memory buffer. Whenever you call commit it write the contents back to the flash sector.

Due to the nature of this flash memory (NOR) a full sector erase must be done prior to write any new data. If a power failure (intended or not) happens during this process the sector data is lost.

Also, writing data to a NOR memory can be done byte by byte but only to change a 1 to a 0. The only way to turn 0s to 1s is to perform a sector erase which turns all memory positions in that sector to 1. But sector erasing must be done in full sectors, thus wearing out the flash memory faster.

Some weeks ago I received a parcel from Itead. Previously, I had written about the Sonoff and they were kind enough to send me two more of their home automation products for me to review: the S20 Smart Socket I wrote about two weeks ago and the Slampher.

The Slampher comes in a simple cardboard box with no documentation at all… just visit their wiki!

The Slampher is kind of a Sonoff RF that sits before any light bulb with an E27 screw. As you can see in the header pic of this post it adds quite some length to the group. It’s a bit bulky and might not fit in every lamp. Off course the board layout is different from the Sonoff and it uses a JST131U-800D 1A triac instead of a relay to switch the bulb. Aside from that they are equivalent.

Firmware over-the-air (OTA) is great. It makes you shiver whenever you throw an update to one of your devices. The ArduinoOTA library for ESP8266 is so easy to use it’s almost magic. But once you have several devices deployed you start to think one step further.

Here I’m going to talk about two different options: writing an automated deployment script that performs OTA updates or giving your device the ability to call home querying for new updates, downloading them and flash itself into the latest version available.

Yes, sure! You can buy a Sonoff RF and you are good to go, I guess. But I didn’t and I was not so sure about the no-named RF receiver so I ended thinking about adding my own.

But first things first. The Sonoff is an ESP8266 based smart switch by ITEAD which comes with custom firmware that communicates with the manufacturer cloud to provide “smart” capabilities like remote switching or scheduling. The cool thing is that it has a line of pins that expose the VCC, GND, RX and TX pins of the ESP8266 and a buttons attached to GPIO0 so very soon it got hacked and there are a number of firmware projects already available. I’m not an early adopter and some work has been done and reported by Peter Scargill, Javier or even in instructables.

The ITead Sonoff Smart WiFi Switch after a small hack to use the Avidsen RF remote to toggle it